


overjoyed

by serafinawitchwoman



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 07:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7091134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serafinawitchwoman/pseuds/serafinawitchwoman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben has nightmares. Leia has memories. And Anakin has a very bad feeling about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	overjoyed

The nightmares start young.

At first, this does not trouble Han and Leia. Every child has nightmares, anxieties, things they're afraid of because the galaxy is big and they are small. It will pass. It draws dark circles under little Ben's eyes and makes his shoulders hunch and his muscles jump when you put a hand on his shoulder, but it will pass. Night after night, her son wakes screaming, crying, about great ugly creatures in masks breathing down the back of his neck, pallid giants whispering things he doesn't understand. Leia holds him until the sun comes up. She understands. She has nightmares about Anakin too.

She confronts Luke about it. _What are you telling my son? You're scaring him! He has nightmares!_

_I didn't tell him anything! Leia, I swear!_

When she leaves, Obi-Wan says, in a very quiet and very strange voice, _Jedi don't have nightmares._

Luke feels a horrible, swooping dread that is not his own, like a great dark bird sinking its claws into his soul and wrenching him away from the earth. He asks what is wrong, but Anakin Skywalker doesn't say a word.

Ben is ten years old the first time he shies away from his mother.

 _He talks about you, Mama,_ he says, swaddled in blankets, his dark eyes fixed on her from the other end of the bed. _He says you hate me. He says you want to hurt me._

 _Who does, baby?_ She reaches for him. The revulsion in his eyes stops her arm in midair, hanging between them like a guillotine blade.

_Snoke. My friend. He talks in my head all the time. He and Grandfather give me dreams._

It takes her several minutes to convince him that everything is all right, that he's safe, that she's not going to hurt him, to reel him toward her and back into her arms. If she had known she was lying, she promises her son now, inside her head, she wouldn't have said those things. She wouldn't have sent him away. She wouldn't have. She wouldn't have.

But she did.

She gets hit with a vision of a woman with long dark hair, with the saddest eyes she has ever seen on a person, sobbing and reaching out for someone she can't see. _Anakin, you're breaking my heart!_ she cries, and then her hands fly to her throat, her sad kind loving eyes wide in terror.

She is wreathed in fire.

She is beautiful.

She is dead.

 _There was nothing you could have done, my daughter,_ a soft, tear-choked voice says in her ear, and she sinks down onto a chair next to the console, and cries.

**Author's Note:**

> What is it with this family and irrevocably altering the fate of the galaxy every time they so much as breathe?
> 
> For my friend Lauren @ diary-of-a-chorus-girl.tumblr.com, who wanted some Kylo Ren angst.  
> Look what you made me do, Lauren.  
> I hope you're happy.
> 
> Title taken from "Overjoyed", by Bastille.


End file.
